A woman accused of helping to cover up the NHS watchdog’s failure to investigate mother and baby deaths at a hospital has claimed she in fact pushed for greater scrutiny.

Anna Jefferson is alleged to have collaborated in the deletion of an internal review into inspections at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay (UHMB) while she was a press officer at the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

But yesterday the 38-year-old pointed to minutes which purportedly show that she called for an external inquiry after discussing the matter with former chief executive Cynthia Bower and her deputy, Jill Finney.

And she denied allegations that, after Ms Finney ordered the cover up and she and Ms Bower verbally agreed to it, she told them: ‘‘Are you kidding me? This can never be in the public domain nor subject to FoI (a Freedom of Information request).’’

Speaking yesterday, Ms Jefferson, who is on maternity leave from the regulator after having her first child, said: “I am feeling pretty alone and vulnerable after having done the right thing and pushed for greater scrutiny into how regulation had gone wrong.

“The report (into inspections at UHMB) concluded that we would do it all again the same, which I found quite hard to accept – it felt like a whitewash.

“Having pushed hard to do the right thing I have now been dropped in this nightmare.”

Ms Jefferson claims she does not remember any order for the review to be deleted, and that she and the other two women thought the report was “not fit for purpose”. Having seen a picture of Joshua Titcombe, who died at Furness General Hospital when he was nine days old in 2008, she already had concerns about UHMB before starting work at CQC in February 2011.

After looking at the review in March 2012, she would bring up the necessity for an external inquiry at meetings, she claimed, But nothing happened until after a meeting on July 17 2012 with new CQC chief executive David Behan, where she suggested “historic regulatory activity” at Morecambe Bay be subjected to “external indepen-dent scrutiny”.

Ms Jefferson said City consultants Grant Thornton, who carried the review which uncovered the cover up, had ignored the minutes from this meeting because it “doesn’t fit their narrative”.

And she described it as “ironic” that the external investigation had found her to be at fault when it had been initiated after she brought up the need for one. (AP)